D&D 5E A case where the 'can try everything' dogma could be a problem

[Agamon]

You're not making much of a case for Narrative mechanics ever, until very recently, being anything more than something that independent games used to distinguish themselves from the established mainstream RPGs.

Not that those "story adventures" reflect on the AD&D 2E system in any way. The actual rules of the game were one thing, and those were just one type of poorly-designed accessory.

I didn't mean to say 2e was bad because some of the adventures were bad. Just that the adventures were bad.

White Wolf was a serious #2 in the 90s, to the point that TSR did try to follow the style with their adventures. Not saying that style of game has ever been more popular than D&D, nothing ever has. But neither is it insignificant.

 

[Aenghus]

2e adventures like the Dragonlance modules and Ravenloft modules, which were often highly railroaded, and also often featured tie-ins to novels. They were to some extent written to appeal to readers who might never actually use them in a D&D game, which was one of the factors contributing to White Wolf's sales, so TSR tried getting on the same bandwagon.

And the same attitude is perhaps visible in the Avatar Crisis adventure modules that transition the Forgotten Realms from 1e to 2e, which are also horribly railroaded and arbitrary, and tie into novels.

This style of adventure writing leaked across into conventional modules IMO as 2e continued. Connected series of adventure modules require certain railroading assumptions for continuity, and the easiest way to ensure this is to prevent players from interfering with the main metaplot at all. The dangers of this is that to players the glass ceiling can become obvious and onerous, some modules didn't give anything for the party to proactively do beside watch the "metaplot and/or awesome npcs" do their thing, and some players developed an extreme aversion to this sort of module and started running in the opposite direction the instant they sniffed the merest hint of a railroad or plot.

I do think all this railroading went too far for some players who wanted more agency, and this attitude led to some of the design criteria for 3e which is in many ways the "Player Empowerment Edition".

 

[Manbearcat]

You're not making much of a case for Narrative mechanics ever, until very recently, being anything more than something that independent games used to distinguish themselves from the established mainstream RPGs.

Not that those "story adventures" reflect on the AD&D 2E system in any way. The actual rules of the game were one thing, and those were just one type of poorly-designed accessory.

...They were to some extent written to appeal to readers who might never actually use them in a D&D game, which was one of the factors contributing to White Wolf's sales, so TSR tried getting on the same bandwagon.

<snip>

The dangers of this is that to players the glass ceiling can become obvious and onerous, some modules didn't give anything for the party to proactively do beside watch the "metaplot and/or awesome npcs" do their thing, and some players developed an extreme aversion to this sort of module and started running in the opposite direction the instant they sniffed the merest hint of a railroad or plot.

I do think all this railroading went too far for some players who wanted more agency...

If you want to know where the "system matters" essays/premise and design impetus for narrative mechanics came from, Aenghus has given you a solid abridged history above. However, going back a bit further to the driving aspect of all of this was White Wolf's major contribution to the milieu; their informal "system doesn't matter" motto (pushed in the marketing of their games or in public comments by designers) and their formal Golden Rule which basically says, “The GM may ignore or change any rule at any time.” And you'll see a GMing ethos that says something like this: "Whenever rules and story conflict, the story wins. Use the rules only as much - or preferably as little - as you need to tell thrilling stories of terror, action and romance."

Does any of that sound familiar?

The WW and D&D cultures "fought" during the 2e era and out of that came multiple sub-cultures. One of them was a sort of merger, an ill-conceived (imo) marriage of D&D with the WW ethos, that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] was talking about. Whereas WW was gothic horror/supernatural romance "storyteller", AD&D 2e worked to become the pulp heroic fantasy "storyteller" analogue.

For a certain cross-segment of folks who (a) wanted emergent gameplay + maximal player agency rather than rail-roaded metaplot and heavy-handed, force-laden GMing, (b) couldn't stand the WW ethos, and (c) really hated AD&D 2e's buy-in, these were "dark times". "System matters" and narrative mechanics were a direct response to this. If you want to say that WW and AD&D 2e were the mainstream games of the early 90s, then sure, "system matters" and narrative mechanics were a direct response by independent designers who were responding to the current mainstream design philosophy (with which they disagreed vehemently).

Tweet and Laws were probably the most notable early pioneers with Over the Edge and Feng Shui (Ars Magica has an interesting role to play here as well, given its design influence by a major WW player). Then you have the "indie renaissance" that was kicked off in the early 2000s with Crane and Burning Wheel, Hicks/Donaghue's Fate. Then you have the stuff that spun out of the Forge; Dogs in the Vineyard (Baker), Sorcerer (Edwards), My Life With Master (Czege), Shadows of Yesterday (Nixon). It continues from there with all the Cortex + stuff, Mouse Guard, D&D 4e (not indie in terms of publisher, but obviously heavily indie-influenced), Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, all the other PBtA stuff, and 13th Age by Tweet (OtE and Ars Magica) and Heinsoo (4e).

In those games, system does matter. Fidelity to highly functional rules and play procedures do matter. This is because, when done skillfully, spinning out of that should be maximal player agency and emergent story. Suspension or abridgement of the resolution mechanics by GM whim (in the interest of story or anything else) and railroads are literally anathema.

 

[pemerton]

where did the whole Narrative mechanics idea come from? Because it certainly wasn't Palladium, or GURPS, or Shadowrun, or HERO.

I mean, first you make it sound as though I'm holding some sort of extreme position, but then all of the mainstream games throughout a significant portion of the hobby's history support me.

You're not making much of a case for Narrative mechanics ever, until very recently, being anything more than something that independent games used to distinguish themselves from the established mainstream RPGs.

I'm not sure what you mean by "narrative mechanics". From my point of view there are two main devices/techniques that support "story now" play. One is player authorship of backstory as an adjunct to action resolution. The other is player authorship of backstory as an adjunct to scene framing.

The first mechanics that I know of that both permitted and also regulated player authorship in relation to action resolution were the James Bond RPG's fate points (Bond points? I know the game by reputation, not first hand). This is from the early to mid 80s.

But informal player authorship was a big part of RPGing before that - you can see it rife in early D&D (spells, new/variant mechanics, whole classes in some cases). You can also see Gygax starting to crack down on it in his DMG, for instance in the attack upon monsters as PCs (whereas in the original D&D books monsters as PCs was lauded, not condemned).

As was debated at length in another thread a year or two ago on a similar topic, Classic Traveller's Streetwise skill in effect permits player authorship, by letting the results of a Streetwise roll determine what sort of contraband might be available on a particular world. (This is an odd intrusion of "indie" techniques into an otherwise straight-down-the-line process-sim game.)

As far as player authorship connected to scene framing - ie the players hooking the GM rather than vice versa - I mentioned some of the origins of this upthread. You can see it in Champions/HERO relationships. I also mentioned the case of Oriental Adventures' family/mentor/etc rules. These are early-to-mid-80s.

Here is Ron Edwards on "story now" play in the context of early RPGs:

I think that Narrativist play goes back to the beginning of role-playing. Yes, a "non-Narrativism" shroud descended over role-playing design and publishing, but I think that dates from the mid-late 1980s. In other words, the "Narrativist revolution" of 2000-2003 is not an innovation, but a return to a lost art.

Looking at earlier games from a Techniques perspective, a shift to Narrativist play within the larger Gamist context is apparent in some Tunnels & Trolls, as discusssed in "Gamism: Step On Up". I also recommend reading and playing Marvel Super Heroes, reviewing the entire Strike Force text in light of the 1st and 2nd editions of Champions being used by that group, reviewing the extensive documentation of Champions play presented in the APA-zine The Clobberin Times', and giving Toon, Ghostbusters, and James Bond a try. I am not saying "These are Narrativist games," but rather, evidence supports the claim that these rules-sets supported some Narrativist play back then.​

In other words, indie games didn't invent this stuff from whole cloth. They built on existing RPG practices and techniques.

An important point that Edwards makes, and that is relevant to thinking about games like 4e or 13th Age as well as some of these earlier games, is that

Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share [a range of techniques] . . . one or the other of the two modes has to be "the point," and they don't share well - but unlike either's relationship with Simulationist play (i.e., a potentially hostile one), Gamist and Narrativist play don't tug-of-war over "doing it right" - they simply avoid one another, like the same-end poles of two magnets. Note, I'm saying play, not players. The activity of play doesn't hybridize well between Gamism and Narrativism, but it does shift, sometimes quite easily.​

RPGs like D&D and Champions were designed to give players lots of mechanical decision-making points, both in PC-building and in action resolution. Those decision-making points can provide the input for gamist play, but also for narrativist play. It is the move to simulationism in the mid-to-late-80s that marks the transition to the sort of play that you, Saelorn, are characterising as the paradigm of RPGing.

In some simulationist games, like say RQ and CoC, players are deprived of mechanical decision-making points. More common, I think, is the AD&D 2nd ed, or WW, approach, in which an ethos is developed that players should only engage with those decision points from an in-character point of view. That is, the game mechanics permit just as much metagaming as was common in classic D&D play, but the instructional text is full of mantras about metagaming being a bad thing. This was not part of RPGing in its origins. (Eg look at Gygax's advice to players on the closing pages of his PHB before the Appendices. It is pure metagaming, beginning with a discussion of how to choose the right PCs from a stable of characters, and ending with advice on how not to be outmanoeuvred by the GM's dungeon-building tricks. The notion of in-character play does not figure at all!)

 

[pemerton]

I played 2e for the entirety of its run and have no idea what "GM-force-heavy, player-doing-nothing-but-immersing-in-character style" means.

<snip>

Do you or does anyone else have any links to a description or discussion of this type of play?

Other posters not far upthread have given some references and illustrations.

The poster-child adventure for this style, in my view, is Dead Gods. (The same approach is also evident in the 3E module Expedition to the Demonweb Pits.)

And here is some illustrative text from the PHB (pp 9, 18):

This is the heart of roleplaying. The player adopts the role of a character and then guides that character through an adventure. The player makes decisions, interacts with other character and players, and, essentially, "pretends" to be his character during the course of the game. . . . [W]henever the character is called upon to do something or make a decision, the player pretends that he is in that situation and chooses an appropriate course of action. . . .

The point of play is not to win but to have fun and socialise.

An adventure usually has a goal of some sort: protect the villagers from the monsters; rescue the lost princess; explore the ancient ruins. . . . Remember, the point of an adventure is not to win but to have fun while working toward a common goal. . . .

Now that you have finished creating the ability scores for your character, stop and take a look at them. What does all this mean? . . .

Obviously, Rath's [the example PC's] ability scores . . . are not the greates in the world. Yet it is possible to turn these "disappointing" stats into a character who is both interesting and fun to play. . . . In truth, Rath's survivability has a lot less to do with his ability scores than with your desire to role-play him. . . . f you take an interest in the character and roleplay him well, then even a character with the lowest possible scores can present a fun, challenging and all-round exciting time.

Don't give upon on a character just because he has a low score. Instead, view it as an opportunity to role-play, to creat a unique and entertaining personality in the game. Not only will you have fun creating that personality, but other playrs and the DM will have fun reacting to him.​

The contrast with the comparable text in Gygax's PHB could hardly be starker.

In Gygax's PHB, the point of the game is to win: to overcome challenges and thereby gain levels.

In Gygax's PHB, the GM creates a world which contains challenges, but the adventure is something that the players choose: they equip their PCs as they think appropriate, gather the information that they feel is needed, set the goal for the expedition that they think is achievable, and enter the GM's dungeon aiming to realise that goal despite the obstacles and distractions the GM will put in their way.

In Gygax's PHB, the role that one adopts is that of a particular character class, which sets the parameters for permissible "moves" and available resources while playing the game. There is barely a hint that roleplaying is a type of pretense, or adaptation of an imaginary personality.

In Gygax's PHB, weak stats are primarily a hindrance to be worked around, not a chance for entertaining characterisation.

Whereas the text from the 2nd ed AD&D PHB presents the adventure as something the GM authors and that the players guide their PCs through. The players' main function is presented as one of characterisation of a PC in a fun and entertaining manner. The mechanics of the two systems are near to identical, but the stated goals and techniques of play could hardly be more different.

 

[pemerton]

You can see the 2nd ed AD&D ethos in the PHB's alignment rules also (p 49):

Although the player may have a good idea of where the character's alignment lies, only the DM knows for sure. . . . There will be times when the DM, especially if he is clever, creates situations to test the character's resolve and ethics. But finding the right course of action within the character's alignment is part of the fun and challenge of role-playing.​

Though there is some resemblance, ultimately I think this is quite different from the standard indie technique of pushing the player into a conflict between two of his/her professed commitments for his/her PC.

First, there is the fact that a right choice is dictated in advance: namely, choosing in accordance with alignment.

Second, it is clear that the GM is the arbiter of what counts as an alignment-conforming course of action (because only s/he "knows for sure" what alignment the PC is).

Third, this then means that the "challenge" of role-playing is the challenge of (i) maintaining characterisation, and (ii) doing so in a way that fits within the GM's gameworld.

There is no sense, in this 2nd ed AD&D text, that the player might play some sort of authorship role in determining what is right, or in shaping the evaluative dimensions of the shared fiction.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The whole point of The Forge analysis, which comes through crystal-clear in Ron Edwards's essays, is to explore and explain the breadth of RPGing approaches, and to contest what it regards as a false consensus of the late 80s through mid-to-late-90s that the only true RPGing is the GM-force-heavy, player-doing-nothing-but-immersing-in-character style that was at the heart of 2nd ed AD&D and White Wolf "storytelling".

In the 90s, there was a huge on-line debate, comparable to the edition war, almost, which painted 'Storytelling' as ROLE-playing and D&D (that same 2e AD&D) as 'ROLL-playing.' Shoving them together like that strikes me as odd, like constructing a straw man. And, I don't think that either AD&D or troupe-style storytelling was at all immersive, though for very different reasons. The latter really encouraged thinking of your character as a character in a story, not an alter-ego, and the former was so complicated, abstract and arbitrary a system with so many artifacts (system artifacts, that is, not artifacts/relics) that it was always right there 'in your face.'

It's also not what it sounded like Mr. Edwards was arguing against. He seemed, to me, to set up the idea that the system didn't matter, that it was all about the GM, as the dogma he was trying to poke holes in.

I can agree it's a dogma that could do with some deflating. It's certainly true that games like D&D in the 90s (and today) and Storyteller, and many others can run very well with sufficient DM skill & freedom ('Empowerment'), but that doesn't mean that "bad rules make good games" (as one of the Wolfies famously said), just that good enough DMs can run a great game by overruling the system when needed (whether that's almost constantly, or once in a while). Good enough DMs can also run great games with functional rule systems, and less experienced/talented/whatever not-quite-good-enough-to-salvage-a-bad-system GMs can run great games using a good-enough system.

And, I can agree that 2e and Storyteller both hid system flaws behind that dogma.

But all Edwards came up with was a new, more baroque dogma. One that, really, mostly still let systems off the hook, just substituted unity of agenda for 'good DM,' as being more important than system quality.

I tend to write online the same as I write for my work. I'm an academic lawyer and philosopher. I'm sorry if it puts you off - it's not intentional.

It doesn't, I quite appreciate clear communication. That was just a humorous aside.

I'm saying I could try to squeeze in bits of an enjoyable activity between bouts of otherwise horrendous agony. I could do it, but why would anyone put up with that?

Now you're just wildly exaggerating.

Arrows might kill some people, but in the experience of any PC, the first arrow is rarely fatal to an otherwise-healthy adult human under battlefield conditions (where the assumptions of combat mean that AC and HP are in full effect). This is an observable reality of the game world

I'm not sure I buy that. A lot of arrows may 'miss' (which in D&D might mean be stopped by armor & shield, as well as fly wide of the mark), and some may roll low damage and do less than half of even a very ordinary adult human's hps (which, in 5e, based on that one side-bar, might not leave a mark on them, so might be hard to distinguish, in the narrative of the game world, from a miss stopped by armor). The difference between taking a few hps from a low damage roll and being dropped by a high damage roll or crit are going to look like luck or marksmanship, not like there's a plot-armor buffer that has to ablate before you're in any danger.

But, if you /do/ want to go the full rules-as-laws-of-physics deal, and the game has hps, then the characters would be aware that there's something - luck, fate, a guardian angel, whatever - between them and death on the battlefield. By the same token, if the game has some other player-managed resources or meta-game factors that have an observable effect on the game-world, then the imagined beings in that world would have a similar awareness of them. Just as they know they can't be killed by the first arrow aimed at them in a battle, they may know that they can pull off certain tricks once or a few times in a fight that they can't otherwise count on working for them, or that fate will sometimes send enemies into their hands in convenient ways.

It's a weird world that has hps and other such mechanics as it's 'laws of physics,' but if that's the standard you want to play to, you should judge all rules by that standard, not apply it selectively.

If I forgo my knowledge of Hit Points and how they interact with arrows or falls from a great height, then I have nothing to go on. I don't know whether or not I should be afraid of a knife, or if I could probably disable the attacker with my bare hands. I'm literally left with no information about the world or how anything works

You can't forgo your knowledge, it's there. But you can discount it when deciding how your character acts - which is the ideal you've put forth as how you want to play RPGs (and, apparently, how you want the mechanics to force everyone to play). A character doesn't know he has 40 hps. He knows that he's more skillful and lucky than most in a fight, but he never knows when that luck may run out, or when he may face someone with greater skill.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Now you're just wildly exaggerating.

The degree to which I detest meta-gaming and narrative mechanics cannot possibly be overstated within the context of this forum. The inclusion of such things within a game, unless they can be removed entirely, will make a game entirely unplayable to me. They are anathema. They are the enemy, which destroys and corrupts an otherwise-enjoyable game into worthless junk. The decision on the part of the designer to include such a thing is a decision to overtly abandon and disregard a significant portion of the RPG fanbase.

I'm not sure I buy that. A lot of arrows may 'miss' (which in D&D might mean be stopped by armor & shield, as well as fly wide of the mark), and some may roll low damage and do less than half of even a very ordinary adult human's hps (which, in 5e, based on that one side-bar, might not leave a mark on them, so might be hard to distinguish, in the narrative of the game world, from a miss stopped by armor). The difference between taking a few hps from a low damage roll and being dropped by a high damage roll or crit are going to look like luck or marksmanship, not like there's a plot-armor buffer that has to ablate before you're in any danger.

That one side-bar was probably the best move they could have made, regarding the controversy at hand. It says that you could play up HP as some weird abstraction of plot-armor and whatever else, but you also could play HP as corresponding to something knowable within the game world. It's entirely possible for the character to make the same decisions as the player, and for the same reasons. You can play your character as knowing that he can take ten hits from a greatsword without dying (during combat, at least - while you're aware and wearing armor and can react to the attacks).

And you don't need to invent some weird metaphysical explanation for it, either - just look at professional sports, where some people are just better at taking a hit without going down. It's a real phenomenon that corresponds to what we know about the real world. No further explanation or suspension of disbelief is needed. And it's also possible to work in a resource for powering special moves, or other Encounter/Daily powers, that doesn't create any issues; it's just on the game designers to bother to design it that way.

You can't forgo your knowledge, it's there. But you can discount it when deciding how your character acts - which is the ideal you've put forth as how you want to play RPGs (and, apparently, how you want the mechanics to force everyone to play). A character doesn't know he has 40 hps. He knows that he's more skillful and lucky than most in a fight, but he never knows when that luck may run out, or when he may face someone with greater skill.

I know my character has 40HP - that she can probably absorb the impact of four arrows which aren't fully deflected by her armor, and she won't drop - and I can make my decisions accordingly. If I disregard that knowledge, for the character, then there's not enough information left to make a decision. If she doesn't know that she can take a few hits - if she really thinks that one lucky shot can put her down, despite all evidence to the contrary - then she would likely make far different decisions than I would as the player.

And that's not interesting in any way. You might still be able to roleplay it, sure, but only in a pure role-playing sense. There's no game to it. A game is defined as a series of interesting decisions, but without any accurate information on which to base those decisions, none of them can be meaningful. It's just four people wandering around blindly, failing to accomplish anything because of their severe delusions. Thus, when we are given a choice of which model we should use to describe the game world, the only interesting choice is the model where character knowledge aligns with player knowledge to the greatest extent possible (preferably without getting silly - e.g. the player shouldn't need to acknowledge luck as a measurable and expendable quantity); the other option is a nonviable solution. Likewise, when we're deciding which system to use, the interesting choice is the system where characters are roughly balanced across class and level. And where one choice conflicts with the other choice, you have to decide based on personal preference and priorities.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The degree to which I detest meta-gaming and narrative mechanics cannot possibly be overstated within the context of this forum. The inclusion of such things within a game, unless they can be removed entirely, will make a game entirely unplayable to me.

That makes you sound like a very unreasonable OneTrueWay kind of gamer. And, it's at odds to what you said earlier:

The former. When playing a role, the player should try to do what the character would do in that circumstance (based on the character's abilities, knowledge, and personality), and not do what the player would do in that circumstance (based on the character's abilities, but the player's knowledge and personality).

You acknowledge that it is already part of the RP process to exclude player knowledge from IC decision-making. You're doing it as a matter of course, player-visible resources from hps to turn-based action economies to x/day abilities, even narrative-power resources, don't change that, they just give you tools.

I know my character has 40HP - that she can probably absorb the impact of four arrows which aren't fully deflected by her armor, and she won't drop - and I can make my decisions accordingly. If I disregard that knowledge, for the character, then there's not enough information left to make a decision. If she doesn't know that she can take a few hits - if she really thinks that one lucky shot can put her down, despite all evidence to the contrary - then she would likely make far different decisions than I would as the player.

There is no evidence to the contrary, from within the fiction. That's how the system models genre heroism. You & I know are characters are very likely to survive what look like great risks, but they don't, we get to RP them being brave/committed/determined/ambitious/foolhardy/whatever enough to take on those risks, rather than RP them pragmatically analyzing the meta-game.

You might still be able to roleplay it, sure, but only in a pure role-playing sense. There's no game to it. A game is defined as a series of interesting decisions, but without any accurate information on which to base those decisions, none of them can be meaningful.

The game portion is still there, we do no know our characters' hps and the rules of the game, and can make either (or both), IC or game decisions.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'm not sure what you mean by "narrative mechanics". From my point of view there are two main devices/techniques that support "story now" play. One is player authorship of backstory as an adjunct to action resolution. The other is player authorship of backstory as an adjunct to scene framing.

Player authorship of backstory is one example of a narrative mechanic, since it involves the player reaching into the game world at an author-level and establishing things beyond just what the character is capable of. Note that, even before the game starts, the players can't establish anything about the world or its inhabitants without the GM explicitly declaring it to be so.

The second type of narrative mechanic would be anything that happens because it's dramatic, or because it's a story, rather than accurately reflecting the nature of the game world. Savage Worlds is full of that sort of thing, where you would be called to make a check (with potentially fatal results), but you only need to roll when it would be dramatically appropriate.

In other words, indie games didn't invent this stuff from whole cloth. They built on existing RPG practices and techniques.

In some simulationist games, like say RQ and CoC, players are deprived of mechanical decision-making points. More common, I think, is the AD&D 2nd ed, or WW, approach, in which an ethos is developed that players should only engage with those decision points from an in-character point of view. That is, the game mechanics permit just as much metagaming as was common in classic D&D play, but the instructional text is full of mantras about metagaming being a bad thing. This was not part of RPGing in its origins.

We all know that RPGs started from miniature wargames, and Gygax addresses them as though they were the same thing. Original D&D was intended as just a game, and the use of "role" in the name is more like the 4E usage as the role you play in the party, rather than the way an actor would use the term. (And we've all heard what Gygax had to say about wannabe play-actors.)

For that reason, I don't consider early D&D to qualify as a real RPG, in the "role-playing" sense of the term. You could certainly role-play within it, if you were so inclined, but that wasn't the point and the rules were not designed to facilitate it. Or at least, there was no indication if that was supposed to be the point, and a very loud voice telling us that it wasn't.

Just as fluff is inextricably linked to the crunch which represents it, though, the instructional text on how to apply the rules is every bit as much of a real rule as the number of HP you gain with each level. Thus, I would put the modern role-playing era at about the point when the rules actually told us to start role-playing rather than treating it as a board game. Anything before that is, at best, an unfinished idea or proto-RPG. If something like early Traveller asked the player to make a check in determining what was available in a certain region, rather than asking the GM to determine its existence and having the player make a check to try and locate it, then that's either because the game wasn't designed for in-character role-playing or the hobby was as-yet undeveloped to such a degree that they didn't know how to convey that appropriately.